big pharma

The big headline for today is that drugs have been found in city tap water. This is not new news; we've know for some time that trace amounts of pharmaceutical drugs have been ending up in our watersheds. Why? Because when people take pills, the drugs comes out in the urine and then end up in recycling back into our tap water.

An independent study was just released showing that antidepressants really aren't any more effective than placebos. (Read more about these findings here.) I'm not surprised; pretty much anyone I've known personally who has been on these drugs doesn't seem to get any better, they just kind of stay the same, at best.

But I do think the drugs do something to your brain, which is probably why people feel like they are getting their money's worth. I've tried antidepressants a long time ago; I can't use them because I'm allergic (as in I could have a seizure). I've also tried St. John's Wort a handful of times (which was probably a bad idea considering I'm seizure prone), and my brain always felt a bit "funny" on it. But does a temporary increase in seratonin really cure depression in the long run? Umm, apparently not.

As recent studies have shown, exercise can be just as effective (and possibly more) in fighting anti-depressants than a pill. But exercise doesn't come in a pill form, so the drug companies have no reason to tell you that.

It's far too easy to blame MySpace for a child's suicide, since it's a new medium and an easy target for anger and frustration. But the fact is, kids have had to go through humiliation, rejection, and pain for a long time before MySpace ever existed. Megan could have just as easily been treated cruelly at school.

So why focus on MySpace? Could it be that the parents don't want to look at themselves and how they were managing Megan's depression? (Could they be in denial about their own role in creating her depression in the first place?)

OK, so can someone tell me why ADHD did not exist when I was a kid (and that wasn't that long ago), and now all of a sudden, certain scientists are claiming that upwards of 10% of our children need to be put on lifelong medication?

This statistic, by the way, was arrived at through the following "scientific" method:

1. 3,082 children participated in the survey.
2. "Using interviews, the researchers were able to establish the presence of ADHD."

So based on 3,000 kids who were interviewed (or their parents were interviewed), the scientists made a firm "diagnosis" of ADHD...and for all we know, this was based on a telephone survey.

CNN just published a story about antidepressants. They are now the most prescribed drug in the United States. What's even scarier, however, is the lead story about a woman who was prescribed antidepressants so she wouldn't get upset at her husband's poor financial management.

Once on the antidepressants, the wife did not care what her husband did with their money. Accordingly, he "led the family into financial ruin."

What amazes me about this is that these stories come out and no-one blinks an eye. Yet, people like myself who partake in alternative healing methods are constantly given a hard time by people in the medical industry. We're supposedly quacks and frauds. Yet, I don't go out passing out powerful drugs to people who don't need them, just so they can avoid their problems.

I can't even begin to tell you how angry and sick I was to read this story this morning, about a 4-year-old girl who died from her ADHD medication. This isn't just a case of the girl having a bad reaction to the drugs; her parents are being investigated for possibly overmedicating her on purpose.